Best espresso in the neighborhood eh?

O RLY?

Spotted this sign on the door of the Starbucks near my place in Silver Lake and almost choked on my dirty chai. That’s a pretty steep claim considering that I consider Intelligentsia and Kaldi both to be in my neighborhood and they easily make the stuff Starbucks serves seem like muddy water. I mean, really, this is verging on offensive. Starbucks is passable and consistent, but the best in the neighborhood? Please. I’m guessing this is a national campaign, maybe we should start a list of Starbucks locations and the “much better espresso option” nearby. Is there a Starbucks and a better place in your neighborhood?

I should note that I drink a fuck of a lot of coffee and I like to think I can tell the good stuff from the crap, and so me saying Starbucks is passable isn’t negative, they have decent coffee for sure and I don’t mind going there, but it’s not amazing and considering the options that are in my neighborhood… well, yeah. I have to call shenanigans on it.

Starbucks as you stated is at best…passable. Sure, their drinks are enjoyable and since they are all over the place, when an inkling for a cafe strikes, I’ll take one.

However, I live in Gardena and they recently put up a Tea Station about 4 blocks away from Starbucks and I’ll be damned if on more than one occasion I’ve pulled into Starbucks, remembered that Tea Station up the road….and zipped right out to drive the additional 4 blocks, because…sometimes taste does matter!

Thanks for the heads up on Intelligentsia, I love a good cup of coffee. I especially like the fact they are going to be doing their own roasting locally.

I tend to go towards the smaller non-chain shops myself. We have a local one that selected its beans and with the help of a custom roaster put together a couple of really disctinct coffees. Since they are the local guys they my coffee bucks. Probably explains why I have a balance sitting on my nearly 2 year old Starbuck card…small local guys just do it better.